Next morning the sun had not climbed over-high when the Reverend Campbell, head down and secret eye aslant, came shuffling to call upon the General. I caught the black shadow of him--for all the world like the shadow of some vulture to sail between one and the sun--as the drooping, furtive creature sidled through the hall. The General had sent for him, for the General was not one to let the grass grow deep between resolve and action. “I will see the man alone, Major,” observed the General; “he might complain, were you present, of a situation offering two against one and planned to over-ride him.” Such management was much to my appetite, since it would but serve to boil my anger--this listening while the Reverend Rogue laid out his pack of calumnies upon Peg. In good truth! I much misdoubt if I had withstood my hands from him when under such honest provocation; and that, maugre his black surtout and pulpit snuffle. And yet it did not miss me as a feature hard to be read for its significance, that now was the earliest time when the General had shown himself so equitable as to think on “two against one” and fail to ask my presence for his conferences. He had met folk for war and peace, and they had come alone; I had been there, and no one spoke of over-riding. However, the subject was not worth quizzing one's self concerning; the Reverend Campbell was come, the best thing about it being that the General lived ample and to spare to arrest whatever of slander he should bring us in his mouth, and put it to the death. The General could track a lie as surely as ever he tracked Creek, and lived even more inveterately its enemy. Peg met the Reverend Campbell almost in the great front door, for she was on her usual journey to consult with me about some trifling nothing. When his sidelong glance encountered Peg's, the rascal cowered and seemed to turn more mean, if that were possible, than by nature belonged with him. But he said no word; he did not so much as muster against her one square look, but sinuously, and as a snake might, writhed himself out of her path Peg, for herself, swept him with a chill, errant eye as if he were some gutter-being, offensive though unknown. “And what brings that bird of mal-omen to flutter about one's door?--so bright a morning, too!” This was Peg's question on the Reverend Campbell as she walked in to me and climbed to her customary chair at the left hand of my desk. “What should you say, watch-dog, was his bad mission? Is he a threat? Does he drag a danger after him? You must be alert if you would make safe your little Peg.” The tone of raillery which Peg adopted secured me; she had no surmise, then, to the purpose of the Reverend Campbell. “It's quite sure,” I returned, evasively, “that our swart visitor would be much uplifted were the General to relent and dispose of Florida according to his wish.”